Through God we shall do valiantly, and it is He Who will tread down our adversaries. (Vs. 12)
With Your help I can attack an army. With God's help I can jump over a wall. Psalm 18
Not feeling particularly brave today? Me, either. And there are things in my life that need to be handled valiantly - with strength and wisdom. I know people this day who are mourning - freshly alone. A vacant pillow on the bed beside him or her. Friends struggle with cancer - numbed by its treachery. A young person abandoned esssentially by both parents. A couple in dire financial straits. All of us need a savior. The one on the white horse who comes in to whisk us away to safety.
I don't know that valiance always brings the kind of victory we are hoping for. By definition it means we aren't cowardly. We face with exceeding strength those things not easily borne. And let's face it, that is really hard to do. To stand up to cancer and bear its horrors with a perseverance and grace that says, "You may conquer my body, but you cannot have my soul." To be in the midst of battle, knowing it might not come out well, but fighting to the end with an undaunted courage that stirs those in battle with you. To do valiantly is to fight against the odds.
Mother comes to mind. Cancer was ravaging her body when my father was arrested in 1985. The horrifying news of his molestation of a child slapped her a second time with an intensity that would have made a lesser woman collapse. That she could pick him up from jail was miraculous. That afterward she took him back to church to seek deliverance and peace was over and above the call of duty. Sick in both body and soul, Mother still called out to her Father. Found the courage to endure both the sight of my father and the nausea of her disease. Here was her hope as I visited her once a week during the long eight months between his arrest and her death in August of that year. Heaven. The ultimate victory over all the world had thrown at her through the years. I didn't know until our visits all she had gone through, not only with my father of late but over the years of their marriage. And before, a first marriage to a man who beat and abused her. A confusion in her about whether or not she had missed her destiny. But one thing she was sure of -- Jesus.
Over the months, Jesus became her one mainstay. Husband now essentially gone in terms of support. Mother and I talked for hours about what heaven would be like. It was an unknown to her and she was a little daunted by the thought of going "home." The process. I asked her to let me know if it was at all possible that she arrived safely, like when we went on trips and called to say we made it. Both of us chuckled at that. Thinking it just a silly hope.
The day of her funeral I was sitting on her back porch. Others took over her kitchen and I couldn't stand seeing it without her multi-tasking there. The day was scorching. Texas in August. But it felt good to take deep breaths away from Daddy and the luncheon ladies. I took off my shoes and put my feet up on the redwood ottoman. Deep breaths. I looked up at the bright blue sky and there she was! Her face floating in iridescent splendor before me. Eyes so bright they glowed. And a beaming smile I can't even adequately describe. "It's all right, Precious." She cooed. "It's all right." She hung there in the air for a moment longer and was gone.
She beat them - both. The cancer and the heartache. Sometimes to be valiant in a fight looks differently to us than to our God. Like Braveheart and the Gladiator, sometimes our bravery leads to something bigger. A greater cause. Sometimes we conquer here. Get through it and rejoice. Sometimes we go around it. But, with His help, we leap the walls that close in around us. With His strength we do exploits uncommon to ordinary men and women. Knowing we are not capable of the battle without Jesus. And in the end, we join the One Who trampled even the last great enemy, death, so we could live forever. The same Spirit Who raised Him from the dead lives in us (Romans 8). So let's live valiantly today knowing it is He Who conquers today.....and forever.
With Your help I can attack an army. With God's help I can jump over a wall. Psalm 18
Not feeling particularly brave today? Me, either. And there are things in my life that need to be handled valiantly - with strength and wisdom. I know people this day who are mourning - freshly alone. A vacant pillow on the bed beside him or her. Friends struggle with cancer - numbed by its treachery. A young person abandoned esssentially by both parents. A couple in dire financial straits. All of us need a savior. The one on the white horse who comes in to whisk us away to safety.
I don't know that valiance always brings the kind of victory we are hoping for. By definition it means we aren't cowardly. We face with exceeding strength those things not easily borne. And let's face it, that is really hard to do. To stand up to cancer and bear its horrors with a perseverance and grace that says, "You may conquer my body, but you cannot have my soul." To be in the midst of battle, knowing it might not come out well, but fighting to the end with an undaunted courage that stirs those in battle with you. To do valiantly is to fight against the odds.
Mother comes to mind. Cancer was ravaging her body when my father was arrested in 1985. The horrifying news of his molestation of a child slapped her a second time with an intensity that would have made a lesser woman collapse. That she could pick him up from jail was miraculous. That afterward she took him back to church to seek deliverance and peace was over and above the call of duty. Sick in both body and soul, Mother still called out to her Father. Found the courage to endure both the sight of my father and the nausea of her disease. Here was her hope as I visited her once a week during the long eight months between his arrest and her death in August of that year. Heaven. The ultimate victory over all the world had thrown at her through the years. I didn't know until our visits all she had gone through, not only with my father of late but over the years of their marriage. And before, a first marriage to a man who beat and abused her. A confusion in her about whether or not she had missed her destiny. But one thing she was sure of -- Jesus.
Over the months, Jesus became her one mainstay. Husband now essentially gone in terms of support. Mother and I talked for hours about what heaven would be like. It was an unknown to her and she was a little daunted by the thought of going "home." The process. I asked her to let me know if it was at all possible that she arrived safely, like when we went on trips and called to say we made it. Both of us chuckled at that. Thinking it just a silly hope.
The day of her funeral I was sitting on her back porch. Others took over her kitchen and I couldn't stand seeing it without her multi-tasking there. The day was scorching. Texas in August. But it felt good to take deep breaths away from Daddy and the luncheon ladies. I took off my shoes and put my feet up on the redwood ottoman. Deep breaths. I looked up at the bright blue sky and there she was! Her face floating in iridescent splendor before me. Eyes so bright they glowed. And a beaming smile I can't even adequately describe. "It's all right, Precious." She cooed. "It's all right." She hung there in the air for a moment longer and was gone.
She beat them - both. The cancer and the heartache. Sometimes to be valiant in a fight looks differently to us than to our God. Like Braveheart and the Gladiator, sometimes our bravery leads to something bigger. A greater cause. Sometimes we conquer here. Get through it and rejoice. Sometimes we go around it. But, with His help, we leap the walls that close in around us. With His strength we do exploits uncommon to ordinary men and women. Knowing we are not capable of the battle without Jesus. And in the end, we join the One Who trampled even the last great enemy, death, so we could live forever. The same Spirit Who raised Him from the dead lives in us (Romans 8). So let's live valiantly today knowing it is He Who conquers today.....and forever.
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